If that sounds uninteresting to you, then you’re ignoring how amazingly compelling (and useful) experiences can be for the shopper. I’ve been thinking a lot about the true connected experience; not one singled out channel but one person through a complete path. A path that does drive in retail, but not one that necessarily starts or ends there.

The most fun experiences are loops – games are an example of this. You can jump in at any point, have a good time and jump out, with the ability to jump back in at any point. This is what I’m working on, creating loop systems that deliver fun to both people and brands. FTW.

And nothing happened.

Confused, she gave both of us a pleading look, and said,

“Push? Push?”

In kiddo-speak that means “doesn’t this toy make some sort of surprising noise when I squeeze it, like every other toy I have?” She just has a way of making complex thoughts into simple verbalizations, but only ones we know.

Figured a lesson lies here – in this unmet expectation my daughter had of the Wonder Pets doll. Her previous experiences with similar toys always delighted her, especially the various Elmos that do all kinds of things when you squeeze them. This simple toy, lacking some functionality, caused her thought process to break.

This felt like a great way to explain meeting (or not) the base expectation people have in the digital and mobile space. People expect to be able to check their balances on a banking site, order books on Amazon, find the closest store on Whole Foods’ site and get the latest news quickly on CNN.

Easy yes? Seems like it, but in this you only should know is, never seems. Because once you start shoveling on the features, the content, the flash, and everything else intended to create stickiness, it can fully distract from the base feature (singular) and information people expect from your site. That’s when they bounce because they simply couldn’t get the site to squeak like they thought it would.

What’s the solve here? Simple – do the legwork and know what that base expectation is from people visiting and feature it, prominently. I’m not saying give up all that is sticky, but put it behind layers to create areas of deeper experience.

Just don’t forget that simple feature, because meeting base expectation is really the least we should do

Then something interesting happens – twitter itself becomes a litmus test for adoption. The real value, and especially the utility, becomes measurable through each subsequent user’s own posts sharing that technology. Viral? Yes, but it goes deeper than simply sharing a funny video or article. This is a piece of functionality people have made part of their lives, and, in certain cases have enhanced their lives through.

In this case I’m talking about Instagram – a photo sharing application, basically a mashup of Hipstamatic with its filter use, tumblr with inline media viewing (down to ‘liking’ photos) and foursquare with its location sharing. How instagram changes the game (to a degree) is changes check-ins from simple text (I’m bowling! @ lincoln square lanes) to a visual of that location. You wrap it all up with the ability to enhance photos through filters and a follower dynamic and you have a powerful tool for us to share our lives. It also can post photos to flickr – and considering all the uses of the flickr API you now have a powerful new source of photography across the world.

What I hope this will do is take the barrier of mundanity away from the casual photographer – making the everyday locations photogenic. I’ve only followed maybe 20 people, and yet I now get a burst of inspiration every day opening the app. Instagram’s business model isn’t clear yet, but I hope it only serves to enhance the great experience the app delivers, and not limits it like those in the past.

So go get it at instagr.am, you’ll be glad you did. Looking forward to your photos.

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The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

Now, I’m a bit of a sucker for IDEO. Basically we all just try to keep up, and often most of us just don’t. I have very fond memories of reading, from rereading William Gibson‘s Neuromancer about once a year to chucking the entire Lord of the Rings series as one book to Thailand for the 17-hour flights.

At this point, I’m a fully digital individual. Have been for many years, and as I hold Nick Bilton’s new tome, I Live In the Future, and Here’s How It Works, I feel like its a natural fit for one of the scenarios in IDEO’s vision. If its the future, why not take us right to it? To Bilton’s credit, he does try to weave content throughout the book – QR codes appear at the start of each chapter, linking up to a page on a mobile site for the book. This goes further than anything I’ve seen to date as a printed piece, and I know what you might be thinking – why not just use the Kindle version? Well, a) I don’t have one (yet) and b) I have a thing for actual books. Not sure what it is quite, maybe its the idea of being able to disconnect from all things digital at some point in my day, so it doesn’t dominate every aspect of my life. Maybe that’s going to die out, but my eyes like it, and I like it.

But, if Bilton’s work were in a purely digital format – not the Kindle app, mind you, but an interface like IDEO’s, focused on connecting all the data connected to each page in a simple, clear way – I’d drop my love of physical books for that deeper experience. I also distinctly remember being in school and struggling to focus on a textbook because my mind wanted more – perhaps a more engaging experience around the text. Thus perhaps the most exciting part of IDEO’s vision is its potential impact on education – imagine, textbooks connecting students, real-time, as they read it, asking each other questions, watching videos of chemistry experiments described in the book, its really endless. And if you see any “digital native” (like my 2 year-old, for example) interact with a digital device, you already know they’re prepared for this evolution of education.

So, please, someone make this. Or, I’ll make some calls and attempt (and probably fail) to make it myself.

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she somehow got chocolate actually up her nose.

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Or, more specifically, the massive population and the average amount of time spent using it. 55 minutes a day. Times 500+ million users. 700 billion minutes a month. And its rising.

I’m sure some of this can be tracked to creative expressions and communicating with fellow man. And if even a fraction of those 700 billion minutes are minutes taken away from the 200 billion hours (by Americans alone) a year spent consuming television content alone, then the capacity for change is entirely there. We know for the first time in recent history this amount of time spent consuming television content by younger generations is dropping. And we know its dropping because that time is being used in mediums these generations can control – online video, music, games, and sites like Facebook.

Then you look at how much time is spent on Farmville alone, in a seemingly unproductive way, and wonder how that time can aspire to do more. The massive success of Farmville demonstrates the power Facebook now holds – a massive connected audience, looking to spend their cognitive surplus, looking to connect with others, looking to make their time more meaningful.

The Obama campaign touched this potential – but only to a fraction of the US population, and only with a goal of electing Obama for the hope of change. It created massive action – if only to drive votes, but was a historical shift in possibility.

Now, as we talk about what we did tonight or if we have some sheep to give away or this great YouTube video, we should also talk about what we need to fix. And then agree, and then act. Easier said, yes, but so was electing Obama.

For now, try using your cognitive surplus more efficiently and cut out some mindless television time with a good book, or a good observation on Facebook that makes people think. Or maybe even supporting a cause on Kickstarter, or Global Giving. Take your minutes as your first step for your own change. Then we’ll work on unifying our minutes for something bigger, and bigger, and..

The above are from my most beloved film, Blade Runner, discussing elements of the “test” given to determine a subject’s humanity.
Replicants were made to exist alongside humans, and be much like humans; but they lacked a trait that said test could determine: empathy.

Philip K. Dick saw many pieces of the future, and to me, this is one of the more telling: that as far as we advance as society, as far as our technology develops, we can’t recreate empathy. It could be what separates us from the exact replicants of ourselves we constantly seek to create.

As we revel in technology, in fiber-optics and haptic touchscreens and all that good stuff, its worth taking a moment to remember what we are, and what these things we create and will create are. I spoke a bit last week about digital relationships syndrome – the development of a new breed of conditions based on more indirect relationships – and the technology we create, and increasingly rely on, contribute to it through its inherent lack of empathy.
That iPhone 4 can’t feel for you. Nor can that laptop or that BlackBerry or that BMW.

As we all march towards a better future – I ask we all consider wiring empathy into the system. Into the way you think about what you do – what you create, especially. We aren’t creating stories, designs, interfaces and experiences for machines to explore – they’re for us. They’re for other people, who feel, consider, and act.

Before you start ideating or building or soldering (which is awesome if you do) think for a while about who’ll see it, interact with it or use it. And think how they might feel, what might delight, frustrate, or make them smile. And then weave it into your creation’s veins. Then, no matter how much pain went into making it, it will be revered, not just used.